Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
They want it to be easy and it’s just not going to be.
Ben Fountain • Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
Who built palaces for his personal pleasure while schools decayed and his country’s health care system collapsed. Who maintained one of the world’s most expensive armies while he allowed his nation’s infrastructure to crumble. Who channeled resources to his cronies and political allies, allowing them to siphon off much of the country’s wealth for t
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obvious reference to American oligarchy
There was no such thing as perfection in this world, only moments of such extreme transparency that you forgot yourself, a holy mercy if there ever was one.
Ben Fountain • Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
The world happened that day, and he’s beginning to understand he will spend the rest of his life trying to figure it out.
Ben Fountain • Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
the risks are never fully revealed until you commit.
Ben Fountain • Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
why, please, do they play the national anthem before games anyway? The Dallas Cowboys and the Chicago Bears, these are two privately owned, for-profit corporations, these their contractual employees taking the field. As well play the national anthem at the top of every commercial, before every board meeting, with every deposit and withdrawal you ma
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Talk is cheap, I got that, but gimme a break. Talk is cheap but money screams, this is our country, guys. And I fear for it. I think we should all fear for it.”
Ben Fountain • Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
only lately has he started to feel the loss, the huge criminal act of his state-sanctioned ignorance as he struggles to understand the wider world. How it works, who gains, who loses, who decides. It is not a casual thing, this knowledge. In a way it might be everything. A